Hunter's Curse
by Cyn V
Summary: There are many hunters, but only those who have given in to the curse know how truly destructive a hunt can be. Celena swore she would hunt down those who had destroyed her life, but what she finds in the end isn't what she had expected at all. - AU
1. The present 1

**Hunter's Curse**

**Part I.**

Celena Schezar briefly stopped to admire the entrance of the building which her scribbled directions had led her to. A stone arch that looked ready to crack framed the front door, and the once pink walls were marred by black streaks of mould. The dirty panes of the windows and verandas were visible behind sturdy metal bars, artistically arranged in curved motifs but topped by vicious spikes that were as capable of causing injury to a trespasser as the day they had been made. Everything about the house screamed that it had long gone uninhabited.

That did not surprise her, as it was located in one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Palas, where the air smelled of rotting fish and the fish-eaters were either poorer than dogs, diseased or both. Any who might have once lived there had probably either moved on to better houses or died.

The young blonde did not find it odd that the directions she had been given had led her there, though. Her gait as she approached the building was bold and determined.

The portal-like double doors of her destination creaked open more easily than she had expected, revealing a grey, badly lit corridor as devoid of people as the street outside. Further along, she reached a mirrored hall that provided central access to the ground-floor rooms and two once majestic, but now rotting, wooden staircases that led to the floors above and below. The black and white mosaic floor was coated in dust and pieces of cracked paint that had fallen from the mouldy walls.

Unfazed by all the cobwebs, the girl fisted her letter and set out to follow the last of the instructions. She proceeded down the stairs until she got to a corridor ending on a metallic door without handle or lock. She almost missed it at first and thought she had gone the wrong way since it did not catch the gleam of her flashlight, rust blending it in with the brown of the adjacent walls.

Looking one last time over her shoulder to make sure she was alone, she tapped on it the sequence indicated on the letter.

A peeking hole opened and a lash-less brown eye inspected her. The blonde stared at it unflinching, until the hole closed and the lock clicked open. The door slid into the wall, revealing a skinny man with a creepy grin and an orange scarf wrapped around his head.

"Hey there, missy!" he whispered, almost as if daring the ghost of past inhabitants to come out and witness his dare-devil insanity.

Celena did not say a word as she followed him deep into the bowels of the building and neither did he after that. The air further down smelled of must and was even staler than on the ground floor of the house, despite the now apparent signs of regular human presence. There were no windows here to provide ventilation.

They did not have to walk long to reach another thick metallic door. This one was better kept and as the teen looked up, she saw a camera perched atop it at an angle, blinking discreetly as it captured their images and probably ran them through a database for comparison and identification. Her guide slapped a switch on the wall and, like before, this door also slid open more fluidly than one would have expected.

The room that met her looked nothing like the decrepit house she had just crossed. It was massive, but well lit and filled with rows upon rows of bookshelves. Some of the tomes within them looked ancient and were adequately protected from the elements by glass doors. There were also numerous tables where several people sat quietly, studying.

"Celena Schezar. Welcome," a tall green-eyed man with scruffy black hair and a bad shave greeted her and led her to a counter to register her arrival. "My name is Gaddes. Do you have your authorization slip?"

Celena wordlessly presented the crumpled paper she had been holding all night and the man turned on an instrument that made a blue light shine. Under the glow, a hidden mark slowly formed on the paper before their eyes: the seal of the Royal House of Asturia.

"Good, you're all clear," the man said and Celena's mind idly pondered what would have happened if she had not brought the letter, or worse, if it had been a forgery. "Welcome to the Asturian National Archive of Supernatural Activity or, as we like to call it, Annie."

He wrote down her information on a log. After the name and time of arrival, he came to the field where the specifics of the subject she intended to study were to go. Before he could ask, Celena gave him the answer.

"Draconians," she said. "I want to know how to track and kill draconians."

* * *

**Disclaimer: _Vision of Escaflowne_ isn't mine, nor would I have it any other way. This story and its plot, however, are.**


	2. The past 1

**Hunter's Curse**

**Part II.**

Celena regained consciousness and was confused when she opened her eyes that the world remained black. She feared she had gone blind for moment, but then she remembered the house falling apart around her before she'd passed out. Her every breath sounded amplified and the moist air of her panicked exhales reflected back to hit her face. She felt around with her hands and found that she did not have much space to move in. The walls were solid.

With shocked tears thankfully clearing her eyes of dust, she realised that she was trapped under the rubble of what used to be her home.

Celena's eyes were open wide and she imagined her pupils would be dilated to the fullest, but there was simply nothing that her mortal eyes could make out. She tried to quieten her breathing to hear what was going on outside her prison or if it would even be safe to draw attention to herself, but ultimately failed. Every cell in her body was telling her to get out and the urge to struggle wildly was threatening to quickly overtake all rationality.

Celena knew that panicking would not help her situation, but the instinct was stronger than any reasonable thoughts. A low wail rose from the back of her throat and before she knew it, she was kicking and pushing at the walls, crying and begging to be released, uncaring of the injuries she was inflicting on herself.

By the time she regained control, her hands were bloody and she could feel the warm liquid running down her calves as well, but nothing else had happened. Nobody had heard her.

She also realised that the air had gotten too warm. Her large gulps of air were no longer enough to satisfy her lungs. She was running out of oxygen, and if she didn't get out soon from wherever she was, she was going to die.

With nothing better to do and starting to feel drowsy, Celena closed her eyes and searched her last memories once again, trying to understand more of how she had gotten in this situation.

All she knew was that she had been asleep in her bedroom, with her mother probably working on her knitting in the living room and her brother still gone. She remembered there had been thunder and the threat of rain because she had had trouble falling asleep and, when she had, her dreams kept filtering in the sounds of the storm in the strangest, most disturbing ways. Then some shouting had woken her up and she had gone down the stairs to see what was going on. Then the ceiling had exploded and that was that.

A drop of something cold hit her cheek.

Celena managed to wipe a hand on her nightgown and reached her face to clean it away. She brought the foreign liquid close to her nose to make out what it was, but the air was too stuffy and smelled too much of her own sweat and blood to understand what the tiny drop was. She took it to her lips and froze: it was blood, and not her own.

Before panic had a chance to settle in once again, Celena suddenly heard something shifting outside. It sounded like someone was pulling something away from the top of her prison. She screamed for help, hoping she would be heard.

The noises halted for a moment, then resumed, and eleven-year-old Celena knew her pleas had been heard. And just in time too, as she was having an awfully hard time staying awake.

Finally, a gust of fresh air rushed towards her and light flooded her sight. Just before passing out from the overwhelming relief, she saw the shape of a tall man above her with short, silver hair.

He smelled of roses and blood.


	3. The present 2

**Hunter's Curse**

**Part III.**

The key turned without making a sound, as Celena had made sure that it would when she had first moved in to the shabby apartment, but she did not immediately open the door. She pushed it just enough that the bolt would not slide back to a closed position on its own and knelt to peer through close to the ground. Only then did she start to push the door open till a tiny slip of the room beyond could be seen.

The wire she had placed there was intact. No one had come into her home during her absence tonight.

"Home" was perhaps an exaggerated word. She moved from place to place so often that there was never enough time to create an actual attachment. All her possessions could be fit into a rucksack and, besides the clothes and weapons she had since acquired, they had all come from the old manor where she had grown up. That was the only place that had ever felt like home to her, and there were nothing but ruins and ash where it had once stood now.

The apartment Celena presently occupied was strategically located close to one of the city's canals. The paths to her two windows were both clear and she could mentally picture every step of the escape route she had planned when she had first settled in. The walls were in various shades of drab and the cheesy wallpaper was peeling. The full extent of the furnishing consisted of a couch, table, chair and a metallic basket for waste with scorch marks on it.

Celena sat on the chair. Methodically, she took out the items from her bag and set them on the tabletop. To the left went her keys and what _gidaru_ coins she had left, and before her, she arranged the new batch of books she had brought to study. On the right, she made sure there was a notebook open on a blank page and a pen.

Throughout the years since her twelfth birthday, she had already filled close to a dozen of these notebooks with her notes. They were among her most prized possessions. She let no one touch them, not even fellow hunters or researchers who frequented the secret archives and asked to consult some information contained within them on a rare subject. This was the knowledge that would help her get what she wanted, and once that goal was achieved she would burn them and get on with her life. As for the books, once she had extracted all that she needed from them, they would either return to the library or meet their fate in the waste basket. Celena had no need for extra weight.

Tonight, her ritual went one step further when the blonde placed some files Gaddes had sneaked into her bag on top of the books.

Gaddes was the dark-haired man she had met on her first trip to the secret library. He seemed to have developed a protectiveness of her since, probably due to her age, and treated her like his little sister. While Celena did not quite reciprocate the feeling and did not always appreciate the attention, she was nevertheless glad for the perks that came with it, as, despite his low rank in the army, Gaddes always seemed to know the latest about what went on in Palas. The information he gathered for her on the side had always proved reliable and pertinent to the furthering of her goals.

The folder he had gotten her this time - marked as the property of the Asturian Army - looked plain enough, but once she opened it, pictures upon pictures of a bloody mutilated corpse dumped in an alleyway spilled out. The sight of the disfigured corpse, torn limbs and huge amounts of blood would have perhaps made a regular person cringe, or curse, or be thankful that the deceased wasn't anyone they knew. Celena did not blink. She had seen worse and lived through worse too, and there wasn't anyone she cared about enough to make her worry on their behalf.

She noted with interest the symbols that had been painted on the walls of the alley in the victim's blood, and skipped ahead to the written report to see what the Army had made of them. Apparently, they were letters in the old script of Atlantis, the homeland of the draconians, and Celena was suddenly regretting that she had never taken the time to learn the language, as the Army hadn't deemed it important enough to ask someone to translate. The report also stated that the victim had still been alive when she had been found, but died en route to the hospital.

Celena went back to the pictures to confirm that it did look vaguely female.

She had yet to be identified and the analysts who had so casually disregarded the scribbles on the wall as the product of a deranged mind still hadn't found anything that could indicate who her attacker was.

Celena quickly memorized the information about where the victim had spent the night and where she had been attacked. The next day, she would go down there to start her own investigation on the attack and its perpetrator.

It was the first opportunity she had that could perhaps take her closer to the completion of her goal. So far, she had studied the theory and history of the draconians; now was the time to put that into practice.

Celena left her things as they were, laid down on the couch and fell asleep planning the next day.


	4. The present 3

**Hunter's Curse**

**Part IV.**

Celena had been at the restaurant where the report stated the victim had last been seen for close to an hour and, by then, she was beyond doubting that this was where the creature she was hunting had picked up the unfortunate girl.

There were two floors, the upper with a view over the lower one, and the lights were dim and localized over the tables. It was the perfect setting to observe without being seen. There was also a small dance floor where there were so many couples twirling and swaying that it was difficult to keep track of the whereabouts of a single person in the mix. Celena's well-trained eye had no trouble keeping up, though, and as such, she knew that her prey would have had the same ease.

She had ordered a light meal and was now nursing the last remnants of her tea, while looking for people who were alone and who fit the profile of the creature she knew her prey to be. This was the hardest part of the job, for there were no outward signs to differentiate draconians from regular humans and sometimes it was only by observing the slightest quirks that one could identify the beasts.

So far, she had crossed out two candidates and moved on to watch a different part of the room. Celena hoped her prey was here tonight, because she would hate to have to return more nights than she strictly had to. These crowded environments did not make her comfortable and she had more pressing matters to attend to, like working on her revenge.

She was keeping an eye on two other possible candidates, both male. One had short dark hair that she could not be sure whether it was brown or black and he was dressed casually, if a bit too lightly for the cold nights of Palas. The other was more suitably attired, but he was so pale that if it were not for his dark clothes, a passing glance in this dim lighting would not have distinguished him from the wall behind him. The most intriguing thing about him, however, was how his short hair was silver-white, despite the fact that he looked her age. His features stirred something buried and forgotten in Celena's memories, though she could not recall what.

The dark-haired man left, but Celena remained watching the other one.

The more she looked at him, the more the feeling of familiarity intensified until she just had to know what it was that pale man reminded her of. She knew it was important and, for her, important could only mean that it was related to either her plans or the night years ago that had changed her life. She was certain, though, that she had never come across the man's picture during the course of her personal investigations about her father and the incident at her family's estate. So what could it be?

Calling over the waiter, she asked for more tea, slunk back into the shadows of her corner and watched.


	5. The past 2

**Hunter's Curse**

**Part V.**

Little Celena woke up neatly tucked in a huge bed on a strange room. The translucent brown curtains were drawn over the windows, filtering sunlight and casting a blanket of soft colours over the space. The bed was probably as big as her mother's and the blankets equally soft and sweet smelling, but she was sure that this was not the same place in which she had weathered so many a thunderstorm.

"Hello?" the little girl called out. "Anyone?"

In response, muffled footsteps suddenly approached the closed door. Regretting her boldness, the blonde huddled back under the eiderdown and tried to pretend she did not exist. The doorknob turned.

"Miss Celena? Are you awake, dearie?"

The eleven-year-old recognized the voice as that of the old, wrinkly cook who sometimes saved her chocolate-covered cakes from her mother's grown-up parties and gave them to her after she got back from one of her exploration trips of the garden. This was someone she knew, someone she could trust to keep her safe, so she threw off the covers and ran to the familiarity of the old woman's presence. Celena held fast to her waist.

"Naneth, I want my mama. Where's my mama?"

The older woman knelt in front of Celena and hugged her. She was trembling and her attempt to soothe her by stroking her hair was producing quite the opposite effect. Celena was suddenly very cold, and more afraid than ever, sensing that something was wrong.

"Naneth...?"

"Oh, dear child..." The tears streaming down old Naneth's face could be heard in her voice, and every bad memory of the past couple of days Celena had been trying to repress sprung back to the fore of her mind: her brother arguing with her mother before leaving, her mother dropping to her knees as she cried, and Celena hiding in the hollow space under the staircase to spy as the front door burst open and all hell broke loose.

"Your mama can't come, miss Celena, but you should know that she loves you very much and will always look after you from where she is now with the angels."

Celena did not doubt the old woman's words, which afforded her some comfort. But rather than focus on the angels that accompanied her mother, Celena thought only of the demons who had taken her away.


	6. The present 4

**Hunter's Curse**

**Part VI.**

Celena watched from behind a corner as her silver-haired prey stood outside the club's door toying with a silver lighter. Pop the top, spark the flame, snap the lid and back to start. Every few minutes he would look up and survey his surroundings. He had been at it for a good half an hour, so Celena suspected that he was waiting for something or someone.

After nearly a week of continuous visits to the restaurant for observation, she was confident enough to say that she knew his nightly routine and that she was able to make a polite guess at what his intentions might be, even from a distance. Everything she had learned so far indicated that he was indeed a draconian - his mannerisms could have been taken for arrogant, but in them she saw the sense of superiority that all of his kind seemed to share; his reflexes were quick and his vision dangerously sharp, even whilst inebriated - and, most importantly, he looked more and more like he was responsible for the murder that she was investigating. She had not caught him stalking any other potential victims, but every night he prowled the streets long enough to convince Celena that something was at hand.

On the other hand, she had yet to put her finger on why it was that she felt like she knew him from some other place. She had not been able to find out what his name was, or any type of relevant information that might jog her memory, as none who frequented the same places as him seemed to know anything. It was almost annoying, as that sense of familiarity could mean anything: from a silly dèja vu, to the fact that they had crossed paths before. It would be very dangerous for Celena to make direct contact without knowing that first and she did not want to do anything to risk him realizing that he had a hunter on his tail. Therefore, she had waited and strictly avoided any direct contact between them.

It was in situations like these that her stealth skills were put to the test and so far they hadn't failed her. What did fail was something else entirely: a white owl came swooping down towards her location. It hooted when it came close enough, catching not only Celena's attention, but everyone else's as well.

The hunter abandoned her quarry for the moment and took cover behind the corner. She hoped he hadn't seen her, but the chances of that being true were slim. She glared at the owl, who was perched on a window sill overhead watching her with its eerie round eyes and hooting still. When that revealed too subtle to make it understand it had to fly off to wherever it was it had come from, or at least keep quiet, Celena turned to more primitive methods. She started making shooing motions with her arms at the inconvenient bird.

She was getting nervous that her prey could vanish while she wasn't looking, but she need not have worried about that particular event. The man came to meet her instead.

Celena suddenly felt a wet cloth pressing against her mouth. She caught a whiff of its scent before she could hold her breath and it was strong enough to weaken her limbs and make her lose feeling in her hands. She tried to struggle away from it, but her arms were soon trapped and she was being dragged to a more secluded location where no one would pass by and find her for days.

Finally, her lungs reached their capacity and she was forced to inhale the noxious chemicals. The last thing to cross her mind were the images of the dead woman who had been found in such an alley as the one she was in now and the sinking, but relieving, feeling that she had failed.


	7. The past 3

**Hunter's Curse**

**VII.**

"Hey, Allen! I'm bored," eight-year-old Celena complained as she invaded her brother's room and threw herself over his bed. It was a habit of hers that usually infuriated her neat-freak of a brother, but she always defended herself saying that she had not been able to resist testing the mountain of pillows to see if they were really as fluffy as they looked when he scolded her.

Allen was sitting at his desk by the window, pouring intently over some book she could not see behind his curtain of golden hair, and she was mildly disappointed when he did not even glance at the sound of her hitting the bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Go away, Celena," he replied monotonously.

The little girl's shoulders slumped and her joy seeped away through the floor cracks. Everyone at home had become so dull. Mother would spend most of the day in bed or say that she was not in the mood to play with her at the moment and that she should go find her brother. And Allen was not any better. He did not go out with Celena to the fields around the house any more, to pick flowers or play swords. He would just sit in his room or in the library, reading all of their father's old books that he could find.

"Come on, Allen," she whined, hoping to persuade him. "You can do that later, come play with me!"

This time, he didn't even say anything. Celena fumed at being ignored.

"Fine! I'll go play by myself. I'm going to make a crown of flowers for papa and when he comes back I'm going to give it to him and he's going to love me more than you because I made him a present while you were going through his things and touching his papers. You know he doesn't like it when we do that, so there!" She harrumphed at the end of the tirade and strode out the door with petite but stubborn steps, holding her long frilled skirt up as she went.

She was just outside Allen's room and preparing to continue her march all the way outside through the blue-paned corridor when she heard a crash coming from her brother's room. Sneaking back to peer around the door's threshold, Celena saw him kneeling at the floor, shaking slightly.

At first she thought that maybe his chair had broken and that he had fallen down. It would have suited him nicely for treating her the way he had been since their father had left this time. But then, she noticed the chair was upright and Allen was trembling.

A strangled murmur made its way to her: "he's not coming back."


	8. The present 5

**Hunter's Curse**

**VIII.**

Celena regained consciousness with a throat so dry, it felt like the walls of her larynx had been glued together. She also had a nasty headache drilling holes into her brain. Both symptoms were easily attributed to the long, unnatural sleep she had just woken up from.

She lay still for a moment, hoping the grogginess and the pain would go away soon, and focused on examining her surroundings. The sight that greeted her was alarming enough that a flare of panic coursed through her veins. The adrenalin thankfully brought along with it some clarity of mind.

The cot where she lay was located in a square, stone room. The door was reinforced with thick steel bars and so was the only window, which was too small to slip through and located too close to the ceiling to reach anyway. The colour of the sky outside let her know that it was close to sunset. That meant that she had been asleep for at least a day, which was long enough to get her far away from Palas if her capturers so desired, so there was no telling where she might be.

Her equipment was nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. She was grateful, though, that they had left her with her shoes on. They would make the escape she was already planning a lot easier and less painful.

She tried to push the cot towards the window, but soon found that it was chained to the wall and would not budge. Next, she tried to jump to grab a hold of the sill and pull herself up, but that did not yield any more results than a fair amount of scrapes and slightly bloody fingers.

Resigned that she would not be exiting through there, she went for the door. The wood around the bars had steel plates screwed in to afford extra resistance, but it looked semi-rotten. The metal of the bars and hinges was also covered in rust, but she knew that would not do much to weaken them. On a whim, she tried pushing against the door to test its strength.

It opened outwards with a shriek.

Celena was instantly suspicious, but, not wanting to be found in a closed space where there were no other exits, she slipped out of the open cell and set down the stone corridor before any one thought to check on her. Her footsteps were silent and cautious.

She could not see her way as clearly as she would have liked, because there were not enough lights on, but there were no doubts about which way to proceed. The corridor was just high enough to let the average person stand upright and wide enough that two people going in opposite directions did not completely block the other's path. It wound ever onwards, never branching out into multiple directions.

The blonde was still thirsty and ready to take a break when she entered a stone chamber that was not as claustrophobic as the passageway she had treaded and where she could hide for a bit until she figured out what to do. She quickly inspected the space and found no one, so she walked over to the darkest corner she could spot and sat down against the wall.

The fact that she had yet to see anyone was unnerving her. What would be the point of taking her if they did not want anything? Her captors had not even bothered to close the door of her cell, so what was their purpose and why hadn't she run into them yet?

She shook her head - that was not important at the moment. First, she had to find an exit, and then she could worry about her kidnapper's flawed plans all she wanted. Maybe even carry out her revenge right here, if she confirmed that the owners of these dungeons were the same creatures she had been hunting.

She got up to continue her escape and studied her options. Three other halls started in that chamber, each leading in a different cardinal direction, plus the one from which she had emerged. She was trying to decide if any seemed more promising than the others, when the sound of shuffling feet coming from somewhere behind sent her whirling around.

Coming from the same shadowy corridor through which she had come was a familiar young man with short silver hair and a sarcastic smile. "Lost?" he asked, standing some distance away.

"Stay back, demon!" Celena hissed the warning, as she backed away from him. Suddenly, all escape routes looked good enough for her.

He was making no effort to follow her, and started laughing instead. The cackle was sinister to hear after the sepulchral silence and the effect was worsened as the sound rebounded off the walls. Celena froze for an instant, before her instincts kicked in and took notice of the tensing muscles that meant he was getting ready to make a move.

Celena turned and sprang into a dead run, blindly turning into the nearest corridor. Almost simultaneously, he followed.

He was taller and faster and she could hear his powerful strides closing in. She did not dare look back because she knew what she would see and preferred to hope that she could still get away, that she would be able to lose him after rounding the next corner.

She did not get that far and winced in pain as his hands grabbed her shoulders and slammed her against the wall.

"What do you want from me?" she said, breathing harshly.

"Me? Nothing, it's them you should..." He never finished, as Celena kneed him and punched him on the face to throw him off of her. Then she took off sprinting down the hall again. She knew she had been lucky to get that hit in and that it would not happen a second time.

She had not put much distance between them when she heard him resume the chase. He sounded furious, spitting curses and shouting threats. He was just detailing all that he would do once he got her, when Celena heard his breath catch.

She dared to look back to see what had happened and she was most confused when she saw him clutch his mouth like he was about to vomit and fall down on his knees in a trembling heap. She did not think that she had enough strength to have hit him that hard, but once more Celena was not about to deny the opportunities afforded to her by good fortune.

The blonde quickly took off again and did not stop even after she had lost sight of him. When she ran past a door that permitted to seal the corridor, she did not hesitate to stop and make certain it stayed closed. Only then did she allow herself to lean against the wall and catch her breath.

Her hands were shaking from the stress and the fright, but she did not even bother to try to steady them. Instead, she pressed them against her forehead to cool down. She could not remain in this dead end for too long; she had to keep going till she found an exit.

She walked up stairs and down, turning every so often in hopes of finding a window or a door that was not closed, and more than once she suspected that she had gone in a circle and back to where she had started from. Everything looked the same, lit by blue lamps and made of rough dark stone walls that snagged on her clothes when she passed too close to them. But it seemed like it was getting brighter and the air was less heavy than before, so she figured she was on the right track.

She took a right turn and found herself in a wide hall that ended in a window. Night had already fallen, but the moons were not what caught Celena's attention. The lack of bars did.

She had almost reached it, when a door in front of her opened and someone came into her path. Celena was surprised to see that the silver-haired man she had left behind had caught up. She widened her stance and brought her fists up, preparing to make a stand and then run for the window as soon as he was out of the way. She noticed that, for some reason, he had changed clothes and his rage had worn off, but his smirk was still as smug and arrogant as before.

"Well, well... look who escaped," he commented. "You're not bad if you got this far, I'll give you that. But you're not getting any further." Without further preamble, he lunged at her.

Celena did not even try to block his punches, as she knew she would not have the necessary strength and focused on evading and trying to get on the other side of him. He was fast and, were it not for the adrenalin in her bloodstream, she would have never stood a chance. As it was, she did not think she could hold her own much longer.

He must have gotten frustrated that she was not surrendering easily, because his moves soon became twice as vicious. Celena's tired limbs could no longer keep up with the new pace and she received a blow to the jaw that sent her to the floor seeing lights.

Desperate, she wobbled back on unsteady knees and tried to crawl towards a close-by door. She kept an eye on the silver-haired demon that was following her closely looking amused at her final attempt. He made no move to stop her from opening the door and going into the room. Celena used the last of her strength to close the door on his face, all the while knowing she had lost, before crumpling onto the floor again and waiting for the pain in her head to abate some.

Only then did she look at what was in the room, and had to wonder how strongly she had really been hit.

There were six beds in the otherwise bare room, all of them occupied. What was strange, though, was that all of the occupants looked exactly the same: young, slim but muscular, with short-silver hair and magenta eyes. They shared the features of the man she had been observing in that bar at Palas and of the two she had just escaped from, and all of them had their eyes on the trespasser.

Before she could process what she was seeing, the doorknob turned behind her, and she looked back to see a tall figure enshrouded in a dark purple cloak, accompanied by two more silver-haired men. One was bleeding from a split lip and the other's clothes were rumpled, identifying them as the ones she had already met in the corridors before. The dark man, who seemed to be their leader, was holding a syringe filled with a green substance Celena could not identify.

"I see the vessel did not need the escort to find her way to where she had to be. That's good. It means she is as susceptible to the currents of fate as predicted," he explained, but Celena was unsure to whom. "Her connection to the source must be stronger than we initially calculated."

The fact that she did not understand any of the dark man's remarks was not at all comforting to Celena. He started approaching, looking very much like he wanted to inject the green liquid into her. She tried to back away, only to realize that the six occupants of the room had crowded behind her. They grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her up and forward in the direction of the threatening man.

She felt the needle break the skin of her neck and the fresh green concoction mixing with her blood with heightened awareness. Before she could identify any possible effects that it was meant to have, though, everything became fuzzy and unconsciousness claimed her once more.

"You will be the height of our experimentation," the whisper reached her in her final moments.

* * *

**A/N: -shrilly newscast report music-  
****Fanfiction author Cyn was found dead this morning at the hands of an angry mob of Dilandau haters for having the gall to write a fic with more than one Dilandau in it. Witnesses who participated in the lynching claim that in her final moments and already awash in tears in a proper display of regret, the misguided author tried to plead her case: "too many... fics with Van... had to... counter...!" This was the seven o'clock news, coming to you live where the action takes place.**

**-newscast ends and reporter walks over to the battered corpse to put in a kick of her own-  
****Ah, these poor, misguided authors nowadays...**

**Review? I'd love to hear your thoughts. ;)**


	9. The present 6

**Hunter's Curse**

**IX.**

Somewhere in a clearing in the middle of the woods surrounding Fanelia, a young man sat at the top of a crest, looking northward. The wind ruffled his dark hair and dried his eyes, but his was the gaze of someone who feared that if they blinked they would miss something important.

The sounds of life of the forest came from all sides around him: birds chirping, nervous squirrels climbing trees and small predators getting in position to try to catch both. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear a dragon lazily dragging his weight, but the wind was too loud and he couldn't be sure. Either way, the boy sat. After all, he had nothing to fear from these creatures.

He had taken up his post shortly after the main meal, and now the sun had come full circle and it was dyeing the sky with hues of pink. Noticing the hour, he closed his eyes and heaved a great sigh.

His entire countenance shifted and if before he had been fully concentrated on his vigil, now he had crumpled upon himself, weary and cradling his head in his hands. His shoulders shook slightly, but the low hums that could be heard revealed that he was only chuckling to himself.

A minute later, he looked back up with a relieved smile and saw that the skies had darkened to purple. He sighed again and brought himself to his feet.

"They were wrong... thank Escaflowne, they were wrong," he whispered.

He looked back down and was about to pick up the bag he had brought along with him when the grass beneath his feet suddenly shone blue, as if a lightning had flashed in the distance and forgot to fade again to darkness.

His head snapped up and the young man felt like he might have burst a brain capillary in the abrupt motion. Through the temporary wooziness in his head, he watched as an immense blue pillar lighted the northern horizon, starting somewhere beyond the lands he could see and disappearing into the stars that were just starting to peer at the world.

Long after the strange phenomenon had faded, the boy still stood rooted in place. His wide eyes had forgoten how to blink and his bag laid forgotten in the ground just beyond his reach.

"The prophecy was true... Gods save us..."


End file.
